


Just a Matter of Time, Honey, Just a Matter of Time

by DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Coran is Wise, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Hunk is a good bro, Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Lance (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Lance and Allura Friendship, M/M, Misunderstandings, Shiro is a Good Bro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-18 04:16:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12380730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee/pseuds/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee
Summary: Lance is 75% sure he hallucinated Keith saying that.  It’s the only explanation for why, in the middle of a totally ordinary conversation about space juice pouches of all things, Keith would randomly stop, frown at him and say in a totally flat, ordinary voice, “I like you, Lance. As more than a friend. I’ve liked you for a long time and it doesn’t seem to be stopping and it’s annoying. Do you want to try dating sometime?”Really.  That’s not the kind of stuff that happens in real life.Boys are dumb and then they're cute. Communication is hard.





	Just a Matter of Time, Honey, Just a Matter of Time

**Author's Note:**

> HEY Y'ALL GUESS WHO WATCHED SEASON 4. I have Thoughts on it. Check out my tumblr (I'm deerstalkerdeathfrisbee there too) if you want to see those thoughts! 
> 
> So this fic exists in some kind of fluffy version of the current timeline where everyone is happier and the Blade and Voltron share custody of Keith because based on that last episode, Keith needs Team Voltron's love and support in his life for serious mental health reasons. I'm currently working on a *much* more serious and less shippy/fluffy season 4 response fic story focusing on Keith and Narti (bring her baaaaaack) right now, but it's not ready for posting yet and this fluff ball was. 
> 
> Also, this is loosely based on a bit in Gilmore Girls season 5 so if you see something familiar in this scenario, that is probably why!

**Just a Matter of Time, Honey, Just a Matter of Time**

“Shiro, if I told you I wanted to be more than friends with you and asked if you thought giving dating a try was a good idea for the two of us, what would you do?”

“...I mean, it’d be kind of weird and we’d probably have a really awkward conversation about different kinds of love and how, while I love you, it’s not in ‘that way’. Why do you ask?”

“EXACTLY. YOU WOULD REACT IN SOME WAY LIKE A NORMAL SENTIENT PERSON.”

“Oh. Did you talk to Lance?”

“NO, I TALKED _AT_ LANCE.”

“Okay...? How...did...that go?”

“HE STARED AT ME UNTIL IT GOT WEIRD AND THEN OFFERED ME A SPACE JUICE BOX.”

“And what did you do?”

“...”

“Keith.”

“I called him an idiot in Galran slang and ran away.”

“KEITH.”

“What? He doesn’t know Galran!”

…

            Elsewhere in the castle Lance walks into Hunk’s room, unceremoniously flops on the bed and, apropos of nothing, blurts out – “So I looked up what Keith called me in the castle database and it’s either an insult or a type of invertebrate used in stew. Translators didn’t get it cuz it’s a name of a thing and all…”

            Hunk, used to Lance’s dramatic entrances and random non-sequiturs, does not look up from the tiny device he’s fiddling with. “Insult…stew bug…kind of an insult either way.”

            Lance makes an incoherent mumbling noise in response.

            “Why was Keith calling you names in Galran?” Hunk asks, pretty sure he already knows the answer but equally certain Lance will want to tell him the answer anyway.

            But unlike every other time Keith and Lance have had a spat, suspicious silence fills the room instead of Lance’s usual dramatic re-enactment of exactly what Keith had done, said, or insinuated, typically liberally spiced by irritable descriptions of just how good Keith looked doing it

            “Lance?” Hunk asks, looking up from the space mouse shower he’s been constructing, concerned in spite of himself.

            “HE’S BEEN HANGING OUT WITH THOSE BLADE GUYS TOO MUCH, THAT’S WHAT!” Lance yells after another long moment of uncharacteristic quiet.

            Hunk decides the path of least resistance is probably his best bet and just leaves Lance to his grumblings.

…

            Meanwhile, Keith is lying on Shiro’s floor, feeling sorry for himself.

            “I take it back,” he mumbles into the cool metal floorboards, “I don’t feel anything for that idiot. Anything at all. I feel nothing. I am the void.”

            Shiro really hopes Keith isn’t regressing into his 13-year-old emo phase. That was bad enough the first time. Now, at age nineteen, it’s not even embarrassing in a fun way, it’s just embarrassing.

            He nudges Keith with his foot. “Maybe he mis-heard you?”

            Keith opens one purple eye explicitly to glare balefully at him. “I was very clear. I enunciated. There was zero room for confusion. He’s just a…” Keith says something in Galran Shiro’s universal translator can’t quite compute. Shiro wonders if Pidge turned on the child-safety settings again. The ones that filter profanity and mis-translate anything remotely sexual. Actually, no, on second thought, that was Matt the first time and it’s probably Matt again.

            (As much as Shiro likes being just one of the guys, he kind of misses the days when everyone was still too starry-eyed with hero worship to mess with him.)

            “Well, on the bright side, you’re leaving on a Blade mission in a few days so maybe it won’t be awkward when you get back?”

            “It isn’t awkward now!” Keith snarls, flinging himself upright in exasperation, “It’s nothing now! Absolutely nothing has changed! I’m starting to think I hallucinated my entire half of the conversation!”

…

            Lance is 75% sure he hallucinated Keith saying that. It’s the only explanation for why, in the middle of a totally ordinary conversation about space juice pouches of all things – (“They’re not juice, they’re an electrolyte blend in a liquid solution” “So…space juice.” “Space Gatorade, Lance” “Nah, too many syllables, I’m gonna go with space juice.”) Keith would randomly stop, frown at him and say in a totally flat, ordinary voice, “I like you, Lance. As more than a friend. I’ve liked you for a long time and it doesn’t seem to be stopping and it’s annoying. Do you want to try dating sometime?”

            Really. That’s not the kind of stuff that happens in real life.

            (Okay, so most of what’s happened to Lance in the last year falls firmly under the category of ‘not stuff that happens in real life’ but Lance is broadly okay with all that stuff, that stuff at least consistently follows the same format – form Voltron, save planet, get new ally, rinse, repeat. This is so far out of left field it makes the space-lion thing seem reasonable.)

            Lance is suddenly irrationally worried he’s on drugs. It happened to Coran without Coran knowing and Coran is…Coran. He knows things. Space things. What if Lance has a new, different kind of brain-worm that makes him hallucinate things like the guy he’s had a crush on off and on since he was sixteen asking him out?

            Quiznack. He needs to head to the infirmary and get this checked out.

…

            “That’s it, I give up. He’s impossible to understand. I’m gonna go train.”

            Shiro probably shouldn’t feel relieved Keith is going to go take his frustration out on the gladiators, but he does. “That sounds like a good idea. Don’t push yourself too hard. Or break stuff that isn’t the gladiator.”

            Keith frowns at him, “That was one time.”

            “No, it really wasn’t.”

            “Maybe I’ll go find Matt. I need to practice defense against staff fighters anyway.”

            Shiro privately thinks Keith’s attempts at befriending Matt are hilarious, especially considering the fact that Matt still isn’t sure if Keith even likes him yet.

            (“Shiro…I think he’s trying to bond with me or murder me. Shiro, don’t laugh, is your protégé trying to kill me? Shiro, THIS IS SERIOUS. Ugh, I’ll just go ask Pidge.”)

            It’s sweet, really. Keith is trying to branch out and step outside his social comfort zone. Shiro should be encouraging, or at least helpful, but watching his friends’ and comrades’ social lives trainwreck in sitcom-level ways is one of the few things that reminds him there’s a world outside this war and it’s a good place with good people trying their best. It’s deeply comforting, honestly.

            And in sitcoms everything works out in the end, just like Shiro is sure everything will work out for Keith. What can he say, Shiro has faith in the kid.

            (And a running bet with Allura that he is about to _win_ , so there’s that.)

…

            “Lance, there’s nothing wrong with you,” Allura’s eyebrows pull together as she stares at him, the picture of befuddlement, “Your brain is fine.”

            “Then why am I hallucinating things?”

            “What things?”

            “Keith things!”

            Allura sighs, “Lance, I know you miss Keith when he’s gone, but teasing him when he’s around isn’t going to make him want to spend more time with you and might actually drive him away.”

            Lance is not proud of the sound he makes in response to that ludicrous suggestion. “What? Miss _Keith_?”

            Allura raises one of those perfect eyebrows skeptically at him, arms folded across her chest. “Lance, you were telling me two days ago about how ‘weird and quiet the castle seems without Keith around, even though, you know, he’s a silent, broody edgelord’.”

            “I – okay, so I might have said that – ”

            Allura raises both eyebrows this time.

            “Okay, so I definitely said that – ”

            Allura smirks slightly.

            “But that doesn’t have anything to do with this!”

            Allura stops smirking, closes both her eyes and drags in a breath like she’s praying for patience. “Lance. What did you think Keith said?”

            “Um.” Lance was not prepared for this question. “That…he likes me as more than a friend and we should date? Which…y’know…totally insane, right? I’m losing my mind, right? The stress of being an awesome universe-saving machine has just…made me snap. In a really specific way.”

            Allura’s finger flicking him right between the eyes is simultaneously completely unexpected and really the logical response to that comment. “Have you ever considered you did hear Keith say that but you were so overwhelmed you needed time to process and now you’re in denial?” she suggests.

            “Uh…no?”

            “Lance, you’re smarter than this!” Allura cries, flinging both hands skyward, “You have one of the highest emotional intellects on this ship, how do you not get this?”

            “But…” Lance stares at her, “He said it…so blandly? Like it was a normal thing to just…throw into a conversation? That’s not how you do this kind of thing, right?”

            “Maybe it’s how Keith does this kind of thing!” Coran chirps from behind him. Lance whirls around to see the mustachioed alien come around the corner, “My apologies, I just happened to overhear. And really, Lance, m’boy, sometimes feelings of the heart aren’t all fireworks and, to borrow a phrase from you, ‘razzle-dazzle’. Sometimes they’re just feelings you live with until you’ve got up the courage to offer to let someone else live with them too.”

            Lance blinks. He hadn’t thought of that. He’s Lance, he’s a romantic at heart. He always assumed if he ever got into a real, honest-to-god Relationship it would be him doing the asking and it’d be this big, over-the-top thing. Fireworks.

            But maybe the fireworks come later. Or the fireworks come first and the part in the middle is the figuring out how to set them up and light them. Or the part where they’re flying skyward, right before they explode. The lead-up to the razzle-dazzle.

            Crap, he needs to talk to Keith. Keith, who is leaving in a few days.

            “Uh, thanks guys,” he tells the Alteans, “You’re…actually really good at this.”   
            “Ten thousand plus years of life experience have got to count for something!” Coran chirps as Allura snorts and shakes her head softly.

…

            Keith found Matt and Pidge together, as usual, and now they’re all on the training deck, the Holts tag-teaming him as he fights them off with his Marmora blade. It feels unexpectedly light, letting them chase him around. Is this what playing with friends feels like? Keith doesn’t remember much from his early childhood, and most of that memory space is dedicated to his few, thin, recollections of his father, so he’s not particularly familiar with the concept. But this seems close, at least. Pidge and Matt are teasing and trash-talking, getting competitive, and if Keith’s not careful he might actually laugh. His botched conversation with Lance seems very far away as he does an unnecessarily fancy flip over the green lash of Pidge’s bayard, only to slide under Matt’s sweeping staff.

            That is, until he almost crashes into Lance, who’s standing in the doorway, apparently watching them.

            Keith immediately loses his footing and nearly trips, rolling into a front-roll to get his balance back (and to show off a _little_ bit, he’ll admit).

            “Uh, Keith, can I talk to you?” Lance asks and Keith almost says no. Just… they talked, didn’t they? They established they’ll agree to disagree about space juice vs. space Gatorade and Lance either doesn’t feel the same way or is selectively incapable of processing the words ‘feelings’, ‘us’, and ‘date’ in the same sentence. That’s talking.

            But Pidge is already shuffling a curious Matt toward the door, saying, “We’ll leave you two _alone_ ,” with a totally unnecessary suggestive eyebrow wiggle and since Lance is standing in front of the door the Holts just escaped through and Keith can’t melt through the floor, he’s stuck.

            Just him, Lance, and the inevitable awkward silence. Yay.

            They stare at each other for a long moment.

            “So…are you going to say anything?” Keith asks into the dead quiet. “Because, if you’re not, I’m just…going to…go...”

            “Wait!” Lance holds up both hands in the most cartoonishly dramatic ‘hold up’ sign Keith’s ever seen. Keith considers walking toward the door anyway but he’s at least a little bit curious, so he stays.

            Lance squares his shoulders and drops his hands, pulling in a deep breath, making a show of centering himself. It’s kind of cute. And Keith kind of wants to punch himself in the face for thinking that.

            “Okay,” Lance says, opening his eyes, “I’m not…quick on the uptake sometimes.”

            Well, that’s just not true. Keith opens his mouth to protest but Lance cuts him off.

            “I need time to process things.”

            Keith gives up on getting a word in edgewise here.

            “And you surprised me. Kind of a lot. Like, I was a little concerned someone had snuck a brainworm egg under my pillow and I’d started hallucinating.”

            Keith has so many questions about what the team gets up to without him.

            “So, what I’m saying is…yeah, I’d really, really like to try dating you. Like, I’ve wanted to maybe date you since the Garrison. When I didn’t want to fight you. And even then, kinda still wanted to kiss your annoying pretty face. But I don’t really know how to do this? You were so…casual about it,” a wry chuckle, “Kinda caught me off guard. You’re normally, um. Pretty intense. As a person.”

            Keith wonders if he should be insulted. But Lance is also saying exactly what Keith had wanted him to say, so maybe not.

            “So…do you still wanna give it a try? The dating thing?” Lance looks so open and kind of ruffled and very earnest.

            Fuck it, he’s cute. Keith still wants to punch himself in the face a little bit for thinking that, but he figures he can let himself get away with it. Just this once. He’s allowed to think his new…date-friend? Are they _dating_? Or is this some kind of trial run period? Is he allowed to call Lance his boyfriend yet?

            He’s allowed to think Lance is cute. Okay. He is.

            “Yeah,” he sighs, “Yeah, I’d like that.”

            Lance beams at him like the goddamn sun and Keith only rolls his eyes a little bit when Lance bounces over, tries to take both his hands, realizes Keith is still holding a sword in one, and settles for just the empty one. “For the record, I would have made asking you out a way bigger deal. Razzle dazzle, baby. Go big or go home.”

            “We’re already home. We live here. This is home,” Keith reminds him flatly, but a smile is tugging up the corner of his mouth.

            “Pssh, no, that’s…you’re messing with me, aren’t you. No fair! Quit laughing, you dork!”

            They’re gonna be alright.

…

            “Long distance is going to _suck_!” Lance groans dramatically a few days later when he realizes all over again, that oh, yeah, Keith is leaving for a mission.

            “I’m coming back, you know,” his boyfriend says dryly.

            “Yeah, but in the meantime I can’t cuddle space-skype-you!”

            “You’ll survive.”

            “I’ll wither away from neglect.”

            “I swear to god, it’s one week. I’ll only be gone _one week._ ”

            Lance squints at him suspiciously, “And then you’ll be back?”

            “Until the next mission, yeah.”

            Lance shakes his head, “Nope, you’ll be back. That’s all. No thinking about inevitable separation in this spaceship, nuh-uh. Now get over here and let me cuddle you. I need to store as many memories as possible so space-skype isn’t as depressing.”

            “You’re ridiculous.”

            “Yep, now snuggle with me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Fic title from 'Work This Body' by Walk the Moon because it's such a perfect fun Lance/Klance song. Plus, that album is called 'Talking is Hard' and I think I'm funny.


End file.
